Funding and actions to create innovative solutions to tackle the Corona-virus outbreak

04/06/2020

This page is a collection of the current activities and funding initiatives focused on tackling or mitigating Coronavirus. it is focused on Innovation Funding Calls for businesses and research organisations.

If you know of one that is not listed here, let us know by emailing ken.gordon (at) scotent.co.uk .

Covid-19 - Supporting Our NHS Many businesses are offering to support our NHS with its vital work. There have been significant offers of support and calls for help with the NHS supply chain. To ensure that these offers are collated in one place and assessed in a timely manner, the Scottish Government has set up a common mailbox Covid-19NHSsupplychain@gov.scot where all offers of support will be acknowledged and responded to.

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FUNDING - FIXED DEADLINES + FUNDING INFORMATION EVENTS

FUNDING - Apply for the Coronavirus Future Fund

Closes end of September 2020

The Government has announced a new scheme to issue convertible loans to innovative companies

which are facing financing difficulties due to the Coronavirus outbreak: the Future Fund.

The Government will initially make up to £250,000,000 available in total for the scheme. The

Government will keep this amount under review. The scheme will initially be open until the end of

September 2020. The scheme will be delivered in partnership with the British Business Bank.

This scheme will issue convertible loans between £125,000 to £5 million to innovative companies which are facing financing difficulties due to the coronavirus outbreak.

All interested companies are invited to present their ideas by 5th June 2020.

SmartEEs2, a European acceleration program, is organizing an open Call for Application Experiments with the objective of providing support to Innovative Companies to digitalise their businesses and access new markets by integrating Flexible and Wearable Electronics technologies (FWE) into advanced products / series of products and services.

Interested companies can apply to one of the following two topics:

Experimenting and testing end-product ideas with FWE technologies

Support to manufacturing of FWE based end-products including upscaling

FUNDING - OPEN DEADLINES

The Future Flight team within UKRI are interested in projects to accelerate testing and feasibility studies leading to early industrialisation in the following areas related to the use of drones:

Delivery of medical supplies and testing equipment remotely to patients.

Spraying of disinfectants

Collection and transfer of medical samples

Surveillance and public order management (such crowds building)

Replacing field-based personnel, for example on inspection and maintenance activities

Ideally projects would be of 2-6 months in length and up to £400,000 in total costs. Funding is available up to 70% for small organisations, 60% for medium organisations and 50% for large organisations. UKRI may consider de minimis grants of up to €200,000 at 100% if appropriate.

i-Con Innovation Challenge is an open innovation call created to assist the built environment sector face the major challenges caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. The initiative connects industry into new expertise, solutions and funding.

For projects which require funding for development to get them market ready, the platform also allows you to apply to the i-Con Innovation Challenge Fund. i-Con Challenge Fund Awards of up to £25,000 are initially available for projects that will create impact and help build resilience in the sector.

This Open Call for Proposal, setup in cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the UK Space Agency (UKSA), is calling for activities to facilitate the quick integration and deployment of concrete and sustainable solutions to contribute to help alleviate the stress on the UK healthcare ecosystem provoked by the COVID-19 outbreak, making use of the different advantages provided by space-based products and services.

The funding is being made available to support projects to develop hi-tech solutions that address: logistics within the health delivery system, for example, drone deliveries; managing infectious disease outbreaks; population health and wellbeing; recovering health system function and handling backlogs after the crisis; and preparedness for future epidemics.

Proposals are invited for short-term projects addressing and mitigating the health, social, economic, cultural and environmental impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak. Projects up to 18 months, funding supports 80% of the full economic cost.

There is no specific budget for this call.

The focus is research of any scale that can demonstrate it will deliver impact in the project length. You will need to show that you can start work within 4 weeks of the funding being confirmed.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to an unprecedented change in the NHS, and a new fund from Scottish Health Innovations Ltd (SHIL) will harness the knowledge and expertise of health and social care professionals across Scotland to develop innovative solutions in response to the crisis.

The package of support for NHS Scotland staff includes up to £25k of initial seed funding, combined with regulatory support, project management and the extensive innovation expertise of SHIL, who have worked in partnership with NHS Scotland since 2002. It only takes between 5 and 10 minutes to apply.

The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) announced its priority over the next six months is to get funding to groups best placed to support their communities during the coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak whilst still honouring its current commitments. Until october 2020 up to £300 million of National Lottery funding will be awarded across the UK, to address the current crisis.

The National Lottery Community Fund will give priority to:

•Organisations supporting people who are at high risk from COVID-19.

•Organisations supporting communities most likely to face increased demand and challenges as a direct result of COVID-19.

•Organisations with high potential to support communities with the direct and indirect impact of COVID-19.

INTERNATIONAL COVID-19 RESPONSE FUNDING SOURCES

FUNDING - Competitive Fund for Peace and Recovery

No closing date

Innovation for Poverty Action’s Peace & Recovery Program is accepting off-cycle proposals, capped at $50,000, for time-sensitive additions to research projects that study or support the COVID-19 response. Applications reviewed on a rolling basis.

A new venture fund is offering grants of $10,000 to $500,000 to coronavirus researchers, and every grant decision will be made in less than 48 hours. The fund, Fast Grants, has raised $10 million from 10 backers including Paul Graham, Stripe cofounders John and Patrick Collison, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman.

COVID19 WEBINARS, COLLABORATION PLATFORMS AND HACKATHONS

VOLUNTEER - Scottish Tech Army

Mobilising Scotland’s tech talent to build solutions to the challenges posed by coronavirus.

The Scottish Tech Army is matching talented technical individuals with urgent recovery phase projects linked to the COVID-19 Pandemic. These could be projects from a public sector organisation, charity or company. They are also seeking talented technical individuals wanting to contribute to meaningful projects.

At ‘Care & Industry together against CORONA’, we offer the opportunity to make targeted and time-efficient contacts with all actors in healthcare, industry, academia and government. By means of an online platform, interested parties can present their profile. Network online, share support and initiatives to combat #coronavirus .

Government and Public Sector Ideas wanted! - join the CivTech Programme

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a huge change in working patterns at the Scottish Government and across the Scottish public sector, with a massive redirection of effort and resources to respond to the most serious health crisis in living memory.

CivTech take public sector challenges and solve them in collaboration with innovative businesses. CivTech has pivoted away from its normal Innovation Flow process, taken the great strengths they’ve developed in terms of rapid, de-risked development, and applied it to the Covid-19 response challenge.

​​​​​​​Funding type: Unlikely to result in grant but supports the public sector to enable SBRI-type calls.

In the context of the COVID-19 epidemic, BioWin, The Health Cluster of Wallonia, has set up an interactive platform which focuses on regional/national initiatives.

Topics addressed:

The development and manufacturing of new diagnostic approaches

The development of new treatments

The development and repair of ventilators

The new sources of funding

The development and manufacturing of hydroalcoholic gels

The manufacturing, supply and recycling of masks and individual protections for companies

You are invited to take an active part on this platform, to choose the theme(s) for which you have a solution or a proposal to share and find a partner with whom to discuss and move towards the realisation.

The European Commission launches an initiative to collect ideas about deployable Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics solutions as well as information on other initiatives that could help face the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.